Northern Maya Lowlands Research Articles

Pre‐Hispanic Maya fisheries and coastal adaptations in the northern lowlands from the Classic (500–900 AD) to Postclassic (900–1400 AD) periods

AbstractRecent studies of fish remains at Mayan settlements from the Classic (500–900 AD) and Postclassic (900–1400 AD) periods are examined. These analyses deepen our understanding of ancient Maya fishing practices and coastal ecosystems and call into question traditional paradigms of environmental stability in the northern Maya lowlands. The effects of droughts recorded during the Maya collapse (800–1000 AD) led to an overall reduction in freshwater inflow into the estuaries combined with episodic increases of sedimentary output. The latter fostered the development of muddy bottoms along the coast, in particular around estuaries formed by underwater river discharges. Ecological characterization and trophic level shifts of fish assemblages from the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean shores help elucidate environmental stress episodes. These findings set a preliminary baseline for pre‐Hispanic Maya fisheries, which can further our understanding of present day fisheries along the Maya coast.

INTERREGIONAL INTERACTION IN TERMINAL CLASSIC YUCATAN: RECENT OBSIDIAN AND CERAMIC DATA FROM VISTA ALEGRE, QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO

We use ceramic and obsidian data from the ancient Maya port site of Vista Alegre to discuss long-distance exchange during the Terminal Classic (c. AD 850–1100) period. This is a time often associated with increased international trade relations and the growth of Chichen Itza as a dominant regional power in the northern Maya lowlands. Critical to the increased volume of international trade were the merchants who transported goods along the coast of Yucatan in large trading canoes. By combining a macroscopic assessment of the ceramics with visual, XRF, and INAA analyses of the obsidian artifacts, we gain insight into the various socioeconomic forces at work moving goods around the Peninsula. Given the paucity of Terminal Classic settlement in the interior Yalahau region, Vista Alegre appears to be an isolated site during this period, approximately 40 km from the nearest coastal neighbor. This allows us to focus on coastal exchange as the sole means by which goods arrived at the site. Our preliminary data contribute to the growing literature on the role market economies played in the Maya area, and the increased opportunities this afforded coastal peoples as circum-peninsular trade became more common through time.

Burnt lime production and the Pre-Columbian Maya socio-economy: A case study from the northern Yucatán

Burnt lime has been crucial for architectural, dietary, and other purposes in Maya society since as far back as 1100 BCE. The recent identification of a series of pit-kilns used for lime production in the Puuc region of the northern Yucatán Peninsula allows for an unprecedented investigation of the socio-economic organization of the Pre-Columbian lime industry. This article reports on the importance of burnt lime to Maya society and presents the results of spatial analyses of the pit-kilns in relation to other archaeological and environmental features. The distribution of the lime production features indicate that the Pre-Columbian lime industry was decentralized and organized at the small corporate group level. Some of these groups likely incorporated limestone extraction and processing into a broader multi-crafting subsistence strategy. Those small corporate groups that did not produce their own lime would have had to acquire it from producing groups through an intra-community exchange system. Spatial analyses also indicate that lime production locations reflect a desire to limit both pre- and post-production material transportation efforts. The study provides a model for investigating the production and distribution of a perishable craft good that can be used for examining perishable goods in ancient societies beyond Mesoamerica. The small-scale, decentralized lime production organization identified in the northern Maya lowlands can now be compared with systems of production and exchange of perishable goods in other pre-modern societies around the world.

USING MULTIPLE LINES OF EVIDENCE TO IDENTIFY PREHISPANIC MAYA BURNT-LIME KILNS IN THE NORTHERN YUCATÁN PENINSULA

This study discusses the investigation of a series of pit-kilns in and around the prehispanic site of Kiuic in the Puuc region of the northern Maya lowlands and presents the multiple lines of evidence that identify these structures as lime production features. The study reports the results of systematic excavations, archaeometric analyses, archaeological experiments, ethnographic inquiries, and spatial analyses. Burnt lime has been used for architectural, dietary, hygienic, and other purposes by the Maya for at least three millennia and yet its importance in prehispanic Maya society is belied by the lack of lime production features identified in the archaeological record. The identification of these structures as lime production features has implications for understanding subregional differences in socioeconomic organization and resource management practices among the prehispanic Maya. This report provides a model for using multiple methods and analyses to investigate and identify lime production kilns that can be applied to societies and landscapes throughout the Maya area and the broader premodern world.

Pottery and Politics: Contextualizing the Classic to Postclassic Transition in Champotón, Campeche

The past decades have witnessed major advancements in our understanding of Classic Maya political history, particularly geopolitical dynamics centered on hegemonic states. Yet there has been only halting progress toward historically based archaeological research focusing on the political, social, and economic impacts of political domination and subordination. To address this deficiency, I examine changes in settlement patterns and ceramic sphere affiliation in the Río Champotón drainage within broader historical and geopolitical developments. In this region, the end of the Classic period is characterized by dramatic changes in ceramic links, with a shift from inland-focused traditions to the incorporation within a coastal ceramic sphere—the Canbalam sphere—that linked maritime trade centers between northwest Yucatán and coastal Tabasco. These transitions were embedded within major reorientations in regional settlement patterns and broader geopolitical dynamics centering on the expansion and dissolution of the Kanu’l state, or Snake Dynasty. Following the decline of the Snake Dynasty of Calakmul, communities in central Campeche forged new political and economic ties with emergent centers along the Gulf Coast and the northern Maya Lowlands. The results of this study demonstrate the transformative nature of hegemonic interpolity relationships and highlight the potential for new avenues of conjunctive research combining historical and archaeological data sources.

Small Buildings and Small Budgets

AbstractDespite the success of lidar in making ancient features visible in certain tropical environments, researchers often have difficulty using lidar to identify small, low, non-linear features. This study juxtaposes lidar data with data gathered from pedestrian survey along the Ucí-Cansahcab causeway, located in the Northern Maya lowlands, to assess the degree to which the invisibility of small buildings in lidar imagery affects demographic research. The juxtaposition shows that demographic research with lidar can move forward in some cases once pedestrian survey has been used as a baseline to establish correction factors for using lidar data on their own. Another current barrier to the use of lidar is cost. This paper provides examples of the kinds of questions that can be addressed by projects with smaller budgets and, therefore, smaller amounts of lidar coverage. These questions include site size comparisons and the degree to which settlement clustered around ancient features such as the Ucí-Cansahcab causeway.

Impacts of Climate Change on the Collapse of Lowland Maya Civilization

Paleoclimatologists have discovered abundant evidence that droughts coincided with collapse of the Lowland Classic Maya civilization, and some argue that climate change contributed to societal disintegration. Many archaeologists, however, maintain that drought cannot explain the timing or complex nature of societal changes at the end of the Classic Period, between the eighth and eleventh centuries ce. This review presents a compilation of climate proxy data indicating that droughts in the ninth to eleventh century were the most severe and frequent in Maya prehistory. Comparison with recent archaeological evidence, however, indicates an earlier beginning for complex economic and political processes that led to the disintegration of states in the southern region of the Maya lowlands that precedes major droughts. Nonetheless, drought clearly contributed to the unusual severity of the Classic Maya collapse, and helped to inhibit the type of recovery seen in earlier periods of Maya prehistory. In the drier northern Maya Lowlands, a later political collapse at ca. 1000 ce appears to be related to ongoing extreme drought. Future interdisciplinary research should use more refined climatological and archaeological data to examine the relationship between climate and social processes throughout the entirety of Maya prehistory.

Turkeys and their Koos: A comparison of what we know about modern and prehispanic techniques of turkey husbandry in the Northern Maya Lowlands

Domesticated turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) have formed a part of regional subsistence systems in the Northern Maya Lowlands of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula since their apparent introduction in late pre-Columbian times. Although domestic turkey rearing in the Northern Maya Lowlands seems to slightly predate Colonialism, the use and distribution of domestic turkeys may have been relatively limited prior to historic/modern times. This paper thus explores differences between prehispanic and historic/modern turkey husbandry in the Northern Maya Lowlands based on zooarchaeological data and modern ethnographic interviews and observations conducted in and around the city of Merida, Yucatan, México. The modern ethnographic data are diachronically compared with zooarchaeological information from the Northern Maya Lowlands in order explore cultural change and continuity regarding the extent of rearing, and the types of turkey husbandry techniques employed in Maya households. Based on the comparison, we highlight the importance of the Koos-technique in the Maya area for successful turkey breeding, which may explain why domestic turkeys seem to have had a relatively limited distribution among the pre-Colonial Maya.

Political alliance, residential mobility, and diet at the ancient Maya city of Pusilha, Belize

We present strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope ratios derived from the tooth enamel of 16 individuals from the Classic Maya city of Pusilha, located in southern Belize. Carbon isotope data suggest that local people ate relatively more maize than observed at many other comparable Maya sites, and hint that dietary practices at Pusilha may have been related to sex and status. Furthermore, strontium and oxygen isotope data imply that four individuals were born and spent their early childhood outside of the eastern Maya lowlands. One individual may have come from the northern Maya lowlands, a second from the volcanic highlands of Guatemala, and two more from the Copan region. In three cases, the pattern of foreigners in burials at Pusilha is inconsistent with their being sacrificed captives. Instead, they appear to have been foreign elites who married into the royal family. Political, economic, and ideological ties between the Southern Belize Region and Copan have long been hypothesized but until now there has been only weak and ambiguous evidence for such connections.

Fishing in the northern Maya lowlands AD 250–750: preliminary analysis of fish remains from Xcambo, Yucatan, Mexico

The relationship between the sea and human populations in the Maya world during Prehispanic times is well supported through iconographic and ethnohistoric evidence. The nature and importance of fish resource exploitation, however, during the most important period of Maya history, the Classic Period (AD 250–900), remains largely unknown. Xcambó (AD 250–750) was an important commercial port located in the north coast of the Yucatán peninsula. According to ichthyoarchaeological results presented here, fishes such as requiem sharks (Carcharhinus sp.), Atlantic sharpnose sharks (Rhizopronodion terraenovae), snooks (Centropomus sp.) and hardhead catfish (Ariopsis felis) were an important part of the diet of the ancient Maya. Although it has been proposed that marine resources, including fishes, could have been traded and transported from coastal to inland localities, evidence from Xcambó regarding such practices remains indeterminate. Most likely, other species could have been salted and traded. Evidence for such activities has not been yet recovered at Xcambó. Results achieved so far indicate that there was a strong influence of fish fauna from nearby, suggesting that fishing in Xcambó was a local subsistence activity.

The political collapse of Chichén Itzá in climatic and cultural context

Chichén Itzá dominated the political landscape of the northern Yucatán during the Terminal Classic Period (AD 800–1000). Chronological details of the rise and fall of this important polity are obscure because of the limited corpus of dated hieroglyphic records and by a restricted set of radiocarbon dates for the site. Here we compile and review these data and evaluate them within the context of political and climatic change in northern Yucatán at the end of the Classic period. The available data point to the end of elite activity at Chichén Itzá around AD 1000, a century after the collapse of Puuc Maya cities and other interior centers. Evidence supports a population shift in the eleventh century towards some coastal locations during a time associated with the end of monumental construction and art at Chichén Itzá. Our results suggest that regional political disintegration came in two waves. The first was the asynchronous collapse of multiple polities between AD 850 and 925 associated with a regional drying trend and punctuated by a series of multi-decadal droughts in the ninth and tenth centuries. The second wave was the political collapse at Chichén Itzá that coincides with the longest and most severe drought recorded in regional climate records between AD 1000 and 1100. This is a time that some scholars have characterized as a “dark age” across the northern Maya lowlands. Political developments during the Postclassic period (AD 1000–1517) correspond with a return to higher rainfall. These patterns support a strong relationship between political disintegration and climatic stress in the Maya lowlands. This research employs Bayesian radiocarbon models in conjunction with calendar dates on carved monuments and climate proxies to evaluate the rise and fall of Maya political centers and serves as an example of the impact of climate change on rainfall-dependent societies in Mesoamerica.

Maya: revelation and re-evaluation

Maya archaeology is flourishing; across three millennia, four countries and an impressive range of intellectual and practical approaches, the eight books under review here make that point well. One is the ninth edition of a deservedly successful book for a general readership, one the catalogue of the first Maya exhibition to be held in Britain in nearly half a century. A further volume deals with sites in the northern Maya lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, another with those in the eastern lowlands, the former British colony of Belize. Two are site-specific: the major city of El Perú-Waka’ in the southern lowland Maya heartland of El Petén, Guatemala, and the idiosyncratic élite centre of Cacaxtla in central highland Mexico where Maya influence on the famous murals is both striking and puzzling. Finally, two have a scientific bent: collections of papers on bioarchaeology/population studies and archaeoastronomy respectively. All draw their evidence, and their illustrations, largely from the Classic Period (AD 250–900), although there are forays into both the Preclassic (1200 BC–AD 250) and Postclassic (AD 900–1500+).

Adapting LiDAR data for regional variation in the tropics: A case study from the Northern Maya Lowlands

Archeologists have used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) as a remote sensing technique for creating high resolution and high accuracy elevation models of the earth's surface in forested areas. In the Maya area, LiDAR allows archeologists to conduct full-coverage regional surveys for the first time. Yet due to variation across space in the characteristics of vegetation, topography, and the kinds of archeological features that archeologists seek to locate, the use of LiDAR in the tropics will not meet the same level of success in every case study. Such variation in vegetation, topography, and archeological features also creates opportunities for archeologists to explore methodological adjustments that can maximize the usefulness of LiDAR data for a particular forested area. Using a case study from Northern Yucatan, Mexico, this paper explores a variety of techniques for visually rendering LiDAR data in an attempt to determine which technique works best for identifying low stone residential platforms given the local topography and vegetation. The most successful technique, a color-classified DEM, was then used to locate hundreds of previously undocumented platforms in the area of LiDAR coverage. Conducting a rapid vegetation survey showed that more features can be found in forested areas when there is less vegetation close to the ground. Vegetation surveys permit the calculation of vegetation-specific correction factors to be used in conclusions derived from LiDAR imagery.

2 How Material Culture Acted on the Ancient Maya of Yucatan, Mexico

ABSTRACTThis paper looks at how materiality in a specific sense (e.g., aspects of raw materials) contributes to materiality in a broader sense (e.g., the mutually constitutive relations between people and things). We embark from the point that common materials, such as stone and perishable containers (baskets, gourds), shape people's social interactions and their physical sensibilities. The use of very large stones for buildings in and around Ucí, a local political center in the northern Maya Lowlands of Yucatan, Mexico, required people to draw on a large web of social relations in order to get access to the right stone and the right labor. Furthermore, hauling such stones and placing them in walls required a very literal form of physical dialogue between laborers that is otherwise quite rare, akin to carrying a couch. We believe that the closely coordinated and intimately shared physical maneuvers required to haul and place a 150 kg stone intensified the bonds between co‐actors, who were likely part of the same household. This suggests that the stability of households depends not just on what people do, but how they do these things together. Many households at two sites near Ucí—Kancab and 21 de Abril—depended heavily on baskets and gourds since pottery was scarce. Aspects of the making of these tools, such as the procurement of materials for baskets, sent people beyond their homes and into contact with many others. Thus, we argue that discussions of materials in craftwork should expand to consider the social entanglements entailed in the procurement of materials. Furthermore, we argue that the specific tactile characteristics of perishable goods such as baskets and gourds help create different kinds of people. In households with less pottery, day to day use of baskets and gourds would have inculcated non‐discursive senses of touch that rose to discursive consciousness at community wide occasions at households that served meals on pottery. Such events would have been diacritical, making participants aware of the differences between themselves. In sum, raw materials such as stone and gourds play a large role in making actors who they were and creating social networks.

THE ROOTS OF SOTUTA: DZITAS SLATE AS A YUCATECAN TRADITION

AbstractThe Sotuta pottery complex has been used in the archaeology of the northern Maya lowlands to identify the Terminal Classic period and cultural association with Chichen Itza. The Sotuta complex, however, is made up of many pottery types, the majority of which are inappropriate markers of elite sociopolitical history. It is argued here that Sotuta-complex slate wares developed out of previous local slate wares regardless of the elite sociopolitical changes taking place with the arrival of the Itza. The wares produced and distributed by commoners were independent of elites and have been artificially chained to questions of elite political expansion for which they are inappropriate correlates.

Two millennia of tropical cyclone‐induced mud layers in a northern Yucatán stalagmite: Multiple overlapping climatic hazards during the Maya Terminal Classic “megadroughts”

AbstractAn annually laminated stalagmite from the northern Yucatán Peninsula contains mud layers from 256 cave flooding events over 2240 years. This new conservative proxy for paleotempestology recorded cave flooding events with a recurrence interval of 8.3 years during the twentieth century, with the greatest frequency during the twentieth century and the least frequent during the seventeenth century. Tropical cyclone (TC) events are unlikely to flood the cave during drought when the water table is depressed. Applying TC masking to the Chaac paleorainfall reconstruction suggests that the severity of the Maya “megadroughts” was underestimated. Without a high‐resolution radiometric geochronology of individual local TC events, speleothem isotope records cannot resolve whether the Terminal Classic Period in the northern Maya Lowlands was punctuated by several brief drought breaks with normal TCs, or whether the region was very dry and peppered by unusually severe and frequent hurricane seasons.

The correlation of surface and subsurface artifacts: A test case from Late and Terminal Classic Popola, Yucatan, Mexico

Surface collections are commonly used by archaeologists to sample artifact assemblages, but the correlation of surface and subsurface artifacts is not fully understood. Cultural, taphonomic, and research-design factors that can affect the relationship of surface and subsurface deposits are reviewed and the correlation of surface and subsurface deposits is tested statistically with data from the site of Popola, Yucatan, Mexico, a Late and Terminal Classic period (a.d. 600–1100) village in the northern Maya lowlands. This study suggests that surface artifact density is not correlated with subsurface artifact density. Large-scale surface collections can characterize the overall assemblage of a site, but not any small area in particular. In shallow bioturbated soils there is no significant variation between surface and subsurface assemblages at any depth. Surface artifacts may be used to identify the presence of subsurface artifacts, but should not be used to suggest their absence.

5 Ancient Climate and Archaeology: Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, and Their Collapse at the End of the Terminal Classic Period

ABSTRACTArchaeological data and evidence of climatic change are used to suggest that the collapse of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá in the Northern Maya Lowlands was the result of long and recurrent drought episodes in the eleventh century. Although environmental evidence indicates that drought episodes might have begun in the ninth century, they gradually increased in frequency through the eleventh century and generated devastating effects on the late Terminal Classic period civilization. Evidence of recurrent drought episodes in the Northern lowlands is reported from the Holtún Cenote at Chichén Itzá. This cenote (sinkhole) shows two moments of the climatic change that affected Northern Yucatán. First, it corroborates the existence of extreme dry environmental conditions during the Terminal Classic period dated between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Second, after C.E. 1100, the water level rose inside the Holtún Cenote when environmental conditions turned wetter at the beginning of the Postclassic period.

6 A Reassessment of Water and Soil Resources in the Flatlands of the Northern Maya Lowlands

ABSTRACTOften characterized as a low, flat, limestone shelf with thin soils and restricted water resources, the northern lowlands are now proving to have supported high population levels and complex social development from the earliest Preclassic times through the Postclassic, though striking differences in developmental trajectories exist. The karstic plain of the north‐central portion of the Yucatán Peninsula is characterized by the presence of dry depressions or rejolladas with wells, cenotes, and caves with water. The spatial distribution of these hydrological features played a key role in the occupation of the region since the Late Preclassic period, while the archaeological data suggest population growth during the eighth and ninth centuries C.E., reaching its peak in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Various agricultural technologies provided adaptations to the resource base, while the general settlement history may be linked to the dynamics of water‐table fluctuations and resulting suitability of the wetlands for subsistence production.

Characterization of Ceramics of the Maya Protoclassic Period in Izamal, Yucatan, Mexico

ABSTRACTAs a result of archaeological investigations carried out in the pre-Hispanic city of Izamal, Yucatan, Mexico a large number of fragments of pottery vessels were recovered from the period known as maya protoclassic. The most important of this collection was its similarity to ceramic style representative recognized as Holmul, whose production has been identified mostly in the region of the Central Maya Lowlands. This style includes Ixcanrio Orange Polychrome ceramic type as diagnostic type more easily distinguished by its orange slip and tetrapods supports. Izamal, is the only place in the Northern Maya Lowlands has reported a large amount of pottery of this ceramic type. In this study we try to identify the origin of manufacture using X-ray diffraction technique. This will allow us to understand the social and political behavior of this ceramic tradition and their presence in this region of the Maya area.